Hillary must get out with grace

For politicians and other performing artists, the great challenge at the close of a campaign or a career is to leave the stage gracefully, to make the elegant exit that earns the plaudits of the crowd, even has'em begging for more. It's the challenge now facing Hillary Clinton.

Democrats far and wide fear she'll blow it. They dread the prospect that she'll drag her now-vain quest for the presidential nomination through every last remaining primary, savaging Barack Obama each step of the way and creating a set of highlight films for John McCain and the hated Republicans to use in the fall campaign.

The guess here is they've got nothing to fear. The Clintons are not likely to do anything that would permanently diminish their status as Democratic royalty and destroy any chance for influence, access and maybe even high position in the new party forming around Obama.

Does that means Hillary will run up the white flag before the primary season ends the first week in June? Not likely. She has promised supporters in West Virginia and Kentucky and the other four primaries still ahead that she won't deny them their chance for a rare voice in the nominating process. Normally, they're never heard from. Got to take her at her word at this point.

In addition, she's expected to fight for inclusion of the votes and/or delegates she won in Michigan and Florida, two states disqualified for jumping ahead of the primary schedule set by the Democratic National Committee. A DNC panel is scheduled to hear arguments on Michigan and Florida at the end of May.

Even a best-case scenario -- she wins most of the remaining contests and gets some of the Florida-Michigan votes or delegates -- would still leave Clinton trailing Obama in elected (and maybe even super) delegates and the popular vote. By sometime in June, her challenge and her candidacy should be over.

But maybe not. After that, she would still have one more option if she chose to take it -- the option from hell, as Democrats see it.

Clinton could take her case to the party convention in Denver in August and stage a full-dress, blood-on-the-floor battle before a national television audience to wrest the nomination from Obama. Will that happen? In your dreams, John McCain.

Common sense and her own self-interest argue that Clinton is too smart to risk damaging her party's prospects in November and destroying her own legacy and future in the party in the process. Hillary's tough, but she's no suicide bomber. Even if she were so inclined, the superdelegates -- and many of her own defecting supporters -- would head her off at the pass and give Obama the nomination. The worst, in short, isn't going to happen.

So are the remaining primaries unimportant? Not entirely. But their principal importance lies less in who wins than in how Clinton treats Obama.

Clinton believes that she has the better chance to win in November, that Obama faces the tougher task because of his Jeremiah Wright-related problems with white, working-class voters and maybe can't win. She's not alone in believing that. However, she's got to be careful how far she pushes that line. She can't bad-mouth Obama too much the rest of the way without further damaging his candidacy.

If she does, she won't be forgiven by Democrats desperate for a resounding, Bush-repudiating victory in November.

All presidential campaigns are a test of character as well as endurance. So far, Clinton has been admirably tenacious, bouncing back from setback after setback with humor and grace and style. She's been her own best cheerleader. But now comes the hard part, the throw-in-the-towel surrender part.

Everything in her nature -- from her time as a teenage Goldwater Girl, to her years as a firebrand college liberal, to her too-ardent advocacy of her health care proposal as first lady in 1993 -- speaks of Clinton's fierce competitiveness, her reluctance to cry "uncle." You've got to love it. I know I do.

The harsh reality is that most fights produce a loser as well as a winner, and she's the loser this time. It's how she chooses to surrender, however, that will make or break her legacy in the Democratic Party -- when and how she chooses to release her delegates. Brendan Byrne, a superdelegate from New Jersey committed to Clinton, told me that "when the time comes, she'll tell us. She's in a better position to judge her options."

Ironically, much the same sentiment was expressed by a prominent Obama backer, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who cautioned against pressuring Clinton to withdraw, as much of the media (seemingly bent on humiliating Hillary) does nightly. She'll know when the time is best, McCaskill said.